Adams Media - Try-It Diet: Eating Clean: A two-week healthy eating plan

Avon, Massachusetts A Try-It Diet is just that a diet that you can try out for two weeks to see if it is a good fit for you. Keep in mind that not every diet is right for every person; please consult with your doctor before making radical changes to your diet. Congratulations! Youve made the decision to become more informed and educated about living your healthiest life. The clean lifestyle helps you to take control of your health and move toward positive improvements like increased energy levels, better focus, fewer illnesses, and more vitality. The key points of clean eating are simple to apply to everyday life once you understand them and why theyre important. If You Cant Get It from Nature, You Shouldnt Eat It.

This is the basis of the entire eating clean lifestyle. Think about it: There is no such thing as a Twinkie tree or a potato chip bush. Your main goal is to eat foods as close to their natural state as possible. This is the easiest guide to what foods should and shouldnt be included in your clean daily meals. Even foods that may seem like healthy options like fruit juices and dried fruit can be sugary pitfalls that lack the full nutrition available in the actual whole fresh fruits. Consuming natural whole foods helps you get the maximum benefit from every calorie consumed.

There is a major nutritional difference between 200 empty calories from a cookie, a slice of cake, or a handful of processed potato chips and 200 calories of fresh fruits, colorful veggies, or lean protein. By sticking to natural foods, you can make sure that youre getting the most out of every bite. Most people scratch their heads at the concept of eating often. You may think that three square meals a day is the healthiest way to eat, or that more food equals more fat. However, research has shown that smaller, more frequent meals benefit the body far more than the archaic three meals a day plan. Spreading your daily calories out between five to six meals and snacks every two to three hours plays a major role in the clean lifestyle.

Smaller, more frequent meals reduce hunger, provide constant fuel for your body, and limit excess calories that would be otherwise stored as fat. Contrary to the fad diets limiting fats, promoting fats, or cutting them out all together, clean eating has made one point simple: Stick to the good fats. An easy rule of thumb is to eat the un fats: monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats. These two types of fats, usually found in fish, nuts, and healthy oils, are heart healthy and brain healthy. Because everything in the Standard American Diet is supersized, all-you-can-eat, or available in bottomless bags and boxes, the average person has completely forgotten, or never truly understood, what a single serving is. As you transition to the eating clean lifestyle, its important to pay attention to the type and amount of foods you consume; this can easily be done by becoming familiar with what a true serving is for each type of food.

Dairy: 1 serving is equal to 1 cup of milk or yogurt, 1 ounce of cheese Meat: 1 serving is equal to 3 ounces of protein like fish, chicken, or beef; comparable to the size of your fist or a deck of playing cards Vegetables: 1 serving is equal to 1 cup of raw leafy greens, or about the size of your fist; cup cooked vegetables, or about the size of a deck of cards Fruits: 1 serving is equal to 1 medium-sized fruit the size of a tennis ball, or cup sliced fruit Refined sugars are everywhere! When eating clean, you should avoid sodas, white sugar, sugary snacks and treats, and even the artificial sweeteners labeled natural. Recent research done on the effects of refined sugars on the blood, brain, and body shows that this one culprit can cause blood sugar spikes and crashes that result in fatigue, lack of focus, compromised immune systems, and serious diseases like type 2 diabetes. One of the best parts of the clean lifestyle is that you can instead sweeten your breakfasts, baked goods, and delectable desserts with healthier alternatives. The natural sweeteners well known in clean lifestyle nutrition are highly recommended over refined sugars because they are processed as little as possible. The most popular unrefined sweeteners are Rapadura, Sucanat, and agave nectar, with more hitting the market every year. While they may be difficult to find at your local grocery store, any health food store will provide you with a wide selection of unrefined natural sweeteners such as these.

When living the clean lifestyle, you want to drink very little, if any, cows milk. Why? First, there are so many steps necessary to pasteurize and prepare cows milk for safe consumption. Second, consider the lengthy list of antibiotics, hormones, and steroids administered to most milked livestock theyre not clean items. Combine complex carbohydrates, lean protein, and healthy fats at every meal. Not only does this concept allow for delicious variety at each and every meal, but it ensures that your body always has the fuel it needs for any job it needs to do. Whether youre gearing up for an intense workout, preparing for a long day, or taking it easy after some strenuous activities, your body utilizes the combinations of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in order to fuel, endure, or recover properly.

By eating a combination of these three types of foods, you can be sure that youre giving your body the adequate nutrition it needs all the time. When clean foods replace the toxic, nutrient-lacking foods in your brain, some of the first noticeable improvements youll see are in energy levels and mental clarity. Unclean foods come with long ingredient lists of hard-to-pronounce names, provide little or no natural substance, and are lacking in vital vitamins and nutrients. They also cause fluctuating hormone and blood sugar levels, and offer little in the way of nutrition that promotes vitality. The good news is that by replacing the poor foods that wreak havoc on the bodys systems with natural whole foods that deliver proper nutrition on a regular basis, all of the bodys systems can be back on track with peak performance in no time! That means more energy, less fatigue and sluggishness, better ability to focus, and improved memory and brain functioning and who wouldnt want all that? If youd like to explore clean eating in more detail, check out The Everything Eating Clean Cookbook , available in print (ISBN: 978-1-4405-2999-3) and eBook (eISBN: 978-1-4405-3021-0) formats.

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